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A major advantage of Barnes’ idea of cultural development, over
my simpler ideas of organizational development, is his recognition that,
although individuals everywhere are capable of the most advanced methods
of thought, these levels are not available to many people until
institutions and technologies have evolved for inculcating and
disseminating them. Schools and universities built up over centuries in
advanced cultures vastly increase the number of people in a society that
achieve the ability to function at advanced levels. At the same time,
individuals from societies that have not as yet achieved such advanced
institutions can and do benefit from such institutions in advanced
countries and achieve comparable levels of thought.
In this paper I want first to present Barnes’ argument; then
to look at the implications of his perspective for development
strategists.
THESIS
Barnes argues that cultures exhibit stages of complexity that are
analogous to the stages of human development identified by Piaget. Like
human development, succeeding cultural stages incorporate and go beyond
preceding stages. Individuals and cultures continue to access and
utilize earlier forms of thought in everyday life, even though they
become capable of employing more complex and abstract thinking where
necessary and appropriate. Moreover, relatively few people in a culture
achieve the more advanced thinking capabilities available in a society,
but all tend to benefit from the advanced institutions and technologies
created by those functioning at advanced modes of thought.
Unlike individual development, cultures can regress from a higher
stage to a lower in the course of history. Barnes cites the early Middle
Ages as an example. I don’t believe Barnes gives enough attention to
the role of technology in creating the environment for individual
growth, but his main purpose is to demonstrate that cultures can
progress through stages paralleling individual development, and then to
use that observation as a platform to examine the co-evolution of
religious and scientific thought.
The general thesis of the book has two major aspects: that
cultural development often includes the development of new and more
complex styles of thinking and expression that affect religion, science,
and other realms of thought; and that some of these developments
resemble the pattern of individual cognitive development as described by
Jean Piaget. More precisely:
- There
are different fundamental styles of thinking, different cognitive
techniques, recognizable in the expression of religious beliefs, in
science, in philosophical reasoning, and other cognitive activities;
- The
more difficult of these styles of thinking will appear only later in
an individual’s development because of a need for experience,
training, and continuing maturation of the brain;
- Piaget’s
work is a fairly accurate guide to the basic styles of thinking that
people learn as they develop;
- A
culture may maintain a simpler, easier style of thought as its
dominant style for many centuries, even if some individuals go
beyond the culture’s general achievement;
- People
everywhere share the same basic human intelligence, but some
cultures have discovered cognitive tools to promote more complex and
difficult cognitive styles, and to educate an increasing number of
people in their use;
- The
most difficult cognitive styles are mastered in any culture only by
a relatively few people, who nonetheless have significant impact on
the general nature of the culture; and
- The
actual history of religious thought in major cultures exhibits a
sequence of development of thought styles suggested by the prior six
points, a development which science has shared.
Professor Barnes uses the familiar
stages Piaget found in childhood as guidelines for categorizing the
stages cultures pass through. The preoperational stage, involving a
substantial amount of magic, is the mode of thought of children between
the ages of two and seven. Primitive societies, those having invented
language but not writing and surviving mainly by hunting and gathering,
bear a relationship to the preoperational stage of individual
development. In such societies, tradition and commonsense observation
determine what is true. People believe in spirits, but don’t worship
them. These societies tend to be egalitarian, without hereditary rulers,
although an individual may rise to a position of leadership by virtue of
superior strength or skill at using shamanic practices.
Concrete operational thought, beginning around age seven, is
grounded in reality. Thinking tends to be realistic or commonsensical,
but traces of the magic remain. This style of thought is the way most of
us operate on an everyday basis. Barnes finds archaic culture
significantly related to the concrete operations level. These cultures
are based upon written language and often feature a hierarchy of power,
as in Pharaonic Egypt. Instead of spirits, these cultures generally have
a number of gods, who rule various domains of life. The invention of
writing makes possible the construction of more elaborate myths
concerning origins and the future.
Formal operational thought is the next Piagetian stage, beginning
around age twelve. At this stage, the capacity for abstract and
hypothetical thinking is developed. People functioning at this stage
seek a basis of ordering data, of making sense of disparate experience
by adopting some explanatory scheme or theory. The great classical
cultures, which began around 2,500 years ago, are to Barnes the cultural
equivalent of formal operational thought. The basic notion of the unity
of all reality arose almost simultaneously in China, India, Judea, and
Greece. Priests or theologians consciously sought to codify and explain
reality in systematic and universal terms. Logical coherence became the
most important test for truth.
Only in the past few centuries have individuals and cultures
evolved beyond the certitudes of classical society. We still construct
logically coherent systems to explain phenomena, but experience has
shown that theories once considered unassailable may turn out to be
false on the basis of better evidence and further reflection. The impact
of the skepticism of modern science is evident in all phases of our
belief systems.
Modern culture evolves from the realization that neither
commonsense observation, nor tradition, nor logical explanatory
theorizing is entirely reliable. We must engage in continual public
empirical testing of even our most cherished beliefs because all such
products of human thinking must be considered conditional and tentative.
The society that emerges when its upper strata are thinking reflectively
is likely to be oligarchic or democratic. No single leader is likely to
stand for very long the continual testing that such a society demands.
Professor Barnes is careful to assert that modern culture is not
exclusively Western, although most Western societies have evolved
further in the direction of modernity than most non-Western cultures. He
devotes an entire chapter to criticisms of theories of cultural
evolution, to criticisms of Piaget’s ideas, and to criticism of
Piagetian theories of cultural evolution.
To summarize his argument,
Professor Barnes, using Piaget’s theory of individual development as a
guide to his empirical research, focuses on the pattern of cultural
development in the areas of religion and science, in different
civilizations. He finds that cognitive dimensions of religious and
scientific thought develop in parallel ways with cognitive development
of individuals. He provides impressive evidence of these parallels,
especially in the case of Western civilization.
IMPLICATIONS
FOR DEVELOPMENT STRATEGY
Barnes is a professor of philosophy interested in the
co-development of religion and science, but those of us interested in
the implications of his theory for development strategy might draw
additional implications from his work. In my introduction to this
website, I argue that the modernization of individuals in traditional
cultures is not only inevitable, but also desirable. Only when
individuals and institutions have advanced from traditional levels will
they acquire the ability to deal with an inexorably changing world. In
the context of the effort by leaders in both industrialized and
developing countries to bring about orderly modernization, Barnes’
thinking prompts some of the following observations:
1.
Modernization vs. Westernization
The notion that modernization is
simply Westernization is the most difficult to deal with. Critics of
Singapore deplore the loss of ethnic identity manifested by its Chinese,
Indian and Malay citizens. Japan is a more complex case. Certainly
MacArthur forcibly introduced Western political forms and values to the
society, but there can be no mistaking the Japanese character of the
modern society. The differences between Japanese style of management and
Western management is an example of cultural distinction, but even in
that case, both cultures have learned a great deal from each other in
post-war years.
I doubt that the Westernization/modernization issue is one that
can ever be solved. Tension will continue between imported modes of
thought and technologies and traditionalists who deplore the loss of old
ways. I suspect that adaptations of Western imports will continue so
they fit better with local customs and traditions, but the basic drive
towards modernization will eventually succeed around the world. The
drive towards increasing complexity and higher levels of skills is
impelled, not just by the desire for more goods and comfort, but by the
sheer numbers of people seeking to survive in the space used by a
fraction of that number in ancient times. More efficient and effective
technologies become necessary to sustain greater human density on the
land, and the new technologies bring with them changes in values,
attitudes and beliefs.
2.
Assessing development activities
Once the development task is
defined as the transformation of traditional into modern culture, and
the transformation of an increasing proportion of people in that culture
from concrete operational thinking to formal operational thinking, it
becomes possible to evaluate more accurately activities meant to promote
development.
Development activities should be
evaluated not just for their profitability and employment creation
benefits, but also for their impact upon the workers who participate in
them. One highly developmental program is to make available in rural
areas small loans for productive purposes. Time and again, micro-credit
projects have been found highly productive in economic terms, while
their impact on the individual borrowers has gone unnoticed. The
creation of opportunities for individuals through the provision of
micro-credit is extremely effective in human development terms because
their aspirations can grow and their personal challenges increase.
3.
Emphasis on education and training is
clearly a priority for developing countries, but problems arise in
efforts to provide it.
One problem is that it is very
expensive, more than is feasible, for a poor country to develop an
education extensive system. Secondly, the poor quality of past education
restricts the expansion of education systems because qualified teachers
are rare. If one learned by rote, it is difficult to bring better
methods to bear in the classroom.
In practice, governments often
expand education systems at all levels faster than they can afford in
terms of the quality offered.
Singapore dealt with this problem
by requiring large firms to offer training to their employees, and then
gradually raising the minimum wage to force firms to raise the
productivity of their workers through mechanization. Multinationals were
actively courted by the Singapore government, and provided with
benefits, but required to raise the quality of their workforce over
time. In effect, the corporations that profited from Singapore’s labor
provided the training that enabled the society as a whole to advance.
This was not due to the generosity of the multinationals. They were
required to train workers, not only by regulation, but by the gradual
increase in the minimum wage which forced manufacturers to become more
mechanized in order to afford to pay higher wages. (See my application
to the MacArthur Foundation)
4.
Graduate education in advanced countries for students from developing
societies is important.
In the modern world, cultures
affect one another in a variety of ways. Marketing, media, and tourism
are pervasive and their impact on traditional societies is often to be
regretted. Graduate education abroad generally has more salutary
effects. The student can evaluate the fit of the institutions and
technology she encounters with the conditions at home. She can interpret
customs and mores and determine which practices would be useful if
adapted to home conditions.
Graduate study abroad can also be
disruptive, of course, to both the individual and the society to which
she returns. In Ethiopia in the early 1960’s, when I lived there,
those who had studied abroad were referred to as the “been-tos”.
They had been to the US or the UK and that set them apart from their
domestically educated age group, and generated a certain amount of
friction between the groups.
Individually, the disturbance can
also be acute. In Beirut in the 1970’s, a Shi-ite with a PhD in
business administration from Ohio State told me poignantly that he
should either never have gone to the United States, or he should have
remained there. The strain of having roots on each side of the water was
tearing him apart.
5.
Political institutions and organizations need to be geared to the level of
the culture prevailing in a society.
This seemingly obvious idea is in
fact ignored all the time by Western observers, the media, and the
Department of State. We fail to make a distinction between repressive
dictatorship and enlightened, but authoritarian, government. None of the
Asian tigers developed under ideal democratic conditions. Some of the
governments were in fact repressive, but most, like Hong Kong and
Singapore were authoritarian (or colonial) without repression. Those
governments produced the fastest development of all, not just of their
economies but also of their individual citizens. The emergence of a
population of healthy, educated, skilled people in two generations must
be weighed against restrictions on political and media expression during
the growth period of their societies. To me, it is obvious that we must
recognize that rapid development, not just economic but more importantly
human development, must have more importance than the immediate
enjoyment of the full range of freedoms of expression common to advanced
countries.
CONCLUSION
I owe Professor Barnes a great debt for the careful and thorough
way in which he presents the argument for cultural evolution paralleling
Piagetian stages. To me, this does not detract from multiculturism,
because respect is due to societies at all stages of development
provided they do not repress the opportunities of their citizens for
further growth. By making clear that people from all societies are
equally capable of achieving the highest levels of development, he draws
attention to the conditions that foster human development. He thereby
helps development strategists clarify their objectives more accurately
than in the past.
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